Page 65 of Our Strange Duet

“Raoul!” I exclaimed, and I turned, searching for him.

“We’re not done yet,” one of the assistants chastised, still combing out my loose hair.

“I’m done,” I said firmly, and broke away from the group circling around me.

“I’m here!” Raoul said, suddenly at my side, a bright beacon shining through the dark.

“We need to go!” I said, all but shouting at him as he ran his hands up and down my arms, assessing me, making sure I was all right. “Please, Raoul. Let’s go.”

“Go?” he echoed. “But Richard just said—”

“I can’t be here!” A spasm of shivers ran through me.

“You’re trembling,” Raoul observed.

“I can’t think. It’s too loud here, and I need to…I need to get away.”

“Where?”

My eyes darted around, taking in the chaos surrounding us. Onstage, the corps was attempting to put on the ballet with only half the dancers dressed and ready. Their flowered hoops, snatched off a props table with too much haste, were falling apart and littering the deck with petals and leaves. Above us, the stage lights flickered, growing dim before flaring up again, too bright and casting strange shadows on the painted drops.

The air was hot and full of trepidation, and the ill-fitting corset Madame Barbier had squeezed me into clamped around my ribs like a bear trap. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I just needed somewhere quiet and cool so that I could sort through everything that had happened and figure out how to escape the mess.

“The roof!” I declared. “We need to get to the roof!”

The sky above us was awash with the inky lavender of summer twilight. The brightest stars had taken up their nightly reverie and twinkled down on us with sparkling indifference.

I stumbled forward, clutching my stomach as I took great gulps of the cooler air.

“Christine, why are we up here? What’s the matter?” Raoul demanded, rubbing a hand over my heaving shoulders.

I knew he thought it soothing, but in the midst of my panicked hysteria, it felt as if he were flaying my skin open wide, peeling back any layer of protection I had and exposing every raw bit of me.

“What’s the matter?” I echoed incredulously. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to sob. “Didn’t you see what just happened?”

“Well, yes, but—”

A great piercing sound rose, wafting up the stairwell and echoing out the door we’d left open. My stomach roiled. Was that screaming?

“It was an accident,” Raoul murmured, ignoring the sound, ignoring what it could mean. “Simply an accident.”

I shook my head. “He did that! He did that to Carlotta. All so that I’d have to take her place. All so that I’d have to sing. Don’t you see, Raoul?” I sobbed, clutching my hands over my ears. Couldn’t he hear the screaming? “He’s been behind everything. He’s been doing it all!”

“Who? Who are you talking about?”

“The Phantom of the Opera!” The words burst out of me like shrapnel.

He blinked at me, and I could tell he didn’t understand.

“The Opera Ghost.”

Raoul let out a sigh. “Christine, there’s no Phantom of the Opera. Those letters…they’re a prank, a scam set to fleece the theatre out of its profits and—”

“What happened to Carlotta was real!” I insisted, shouting over him.

He paused, his eyebrows knitting together. “Yes, but…no one could have done that to her. It’s very sad, tragic even, but…don’t such things happen as a voice ages?”

I began to laugh then—deep, ugly laughter at the absurdity of this conversation, at the impossibility of it all.